As The Spirit Moves – The Saturday Evening Posthttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com
Home of The Saturday Evening PostThu, 24 May 2018 16:00:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.6As the Spirit Moves VI: Mrs. Couch & Mrs. Thillhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/22/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-vi-couch-thill.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/22/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-vi-couch-thill.html#respondWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31448She has a way of asking you how you feel that would make you swear you could smell lilies.

Mrs. Crouch, too, has been having some pleasant chats with the spirits. And it is only natural that they should treat her as practically one of the family, for she has been doing propaganda work for the Other Side for years. I often think that one of the big undertaking corporations is overlook­ing a great little advance agent in Mrs. Crouch. She has a way of asking you how you feel that would make you swear you could smell lilies.

Mrs. Crouch frequently states that she takes but little interest in the things of this world, and she dresses the part. There is a quaint style about her, which lends to every­thing that she wears an air of its having been bequeathed to her by some dear one who went over round 1889.

There is a certain snap to her conversa­tion, too, for which she is noted among our set. Perhaps her favorite line is the one about in the midst of life, which she has been getting off for so long that she has come to take an author’s pride in it. You never saw anyone so clever as Mrs. Crouch is at tracing resemblances to close friends of hers who passed on at what she calls, in round numbers, an early age; you would be surprised at the number of persons with whom she comes in contact who have just that same look round the eyes. In fact, you might call Mrs. Crouch the original Polyanna, and not be much out of the way.

So the board-board operations have been right along in her line. Scarcely a day passes, she tells me, that she does not re­ceive a message from at least one of her large circle of spirit friends, saying that everything is fine, and how is she getting on, herself? It has really been just like Old Home Week for Mrs. Crouch ever since she got her Ouija board.

Miss Thill is another of our girls who has made good with the spirits. Spiritualism is no novelty to her; she has been a fol­lower of it, as she says, almost all her life, and by now she has fairly well caught up with it. In her case, also, it is no surprise to find her so talented with the Ouija board. She has always been of a markedly mediumistic turn of mind—there are even strong indications of clairvoyant powers. Time and time again Miss Thill has had the experience of walking along the street thinking of some friend of hers, and whom will she meet, not two hours afterward, but that very same friend! As she says, you cannot explain such things away by calling them mere coincidence. Sometimes it really almost frightens Miss Thill to think about it.

You would know that Miss Thill was of a spiritualistic trend only to look at her. She has a way of suddenly becoming ob­livious of all that is going on about her and of looking far off into space, with an intent expression, as of one seeking, seeking. Materialists, at their first sight of her in this condition, are apt to think that she is trying to remember whether she really did turn off the hot water before leaving home. Her very attire is suggestive of the occult influence. What she saves on corsets she lavishes on necklaces of synthetic jade, carved with mystic signs, which I’ll wager have no good meaning behind them if the truth were known.

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

Miss Thill is a pretty logical candidate for the head of the local branch of the Ouija Board Workers of the World. She has an appreciable edge on the other con­testants in that she once attended a lecture given by Sir Oliver Lodge himself. Un­fortunately she chose rather an off day; Sir Oliver was setting them right as to the family life of the atom, and it went right on over Miss Thill’s head; she couldn’t even jump for it. There were none of those little homey touches about Sir Oliver’s intimacies with the spirits, which Miss Thill had been so eager to hear, and I be­lieve that there was quite a little bitterness on her part about it. She has never felt really the same toward Sir Oliver since. So far as she is concerned he can turn right round and go back to England-back to his old haunts, as you might put it.

By means of her Ouija board Miss Thill, as might have been expected, has worked her way right into the highest intellectual circles of spirit society. As if recognizing an equal some of the greatest celebrities of the Great Beyond have taken her up. It seems that it is no uncommon occurrence for her to talk to such people as Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott on the Ouija board; she has come to think scarcely anything of it. I hear that she has been receiving several messages from Shakespeare only lately. His spirit is not what a person could call really chatty, as I understand it; he doesn’t seem to be one to do much talk ing about himself. Miss Thill has to help him out a good deal. She asks him one of her typically intellectual questions, such as what he thinks of the modern drama, and all he has to do to answer her is to guide the planchette to either “Yes” or “No”; or, at most, both. Still, his spirit is almost an entire stranger to her, when you stop to think of it, so you really cannot expect anything of a more inside nature just yet, anyway.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/22/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-vi-couch-thill.html/feed0As the Spirit Moves, Part V: Aunt Bertha’s Snappy Workhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/15/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-aunt-berthas-snappy-work.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/15/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-aunt-berthas-snappy-work.html#respondWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31445I would back Aunt Bertha against any living solitaire player for any amount of money you want, only providing that the judges leave the room during the contest.

But when you come right down to it there are few who can get more out of a Ouija board than our own Aunt Bertha. Her work is not so highly systematized as that of Mrs. Both, but it is pretty fairly spectacular, in its way.

I knew that Aunt Bertha was going to get in some snappy work on the Ouija board; I could have told you that before I ever saw her in action. She has always been good at anything anywhere neatly like that. Now you take solitaire, for instance. I don’t think I ever saw a prettier game of solitaire than that which Aunt Bertha puts up. You may be looking over her shoulder while she deals out the cards for a game of Canfield, and from the layout before her you would swear that she had not a chance of getting more than one or two aces up, at most. In fact, it looks so hopeless that you lose interest in the game, and go over to the other end of the room to get a magazine. And when you come back Aunt Bertha will have all the cards in four stacks in front of her, and she will smile triumphantly and exclaim: “What do you think of that? I got it again!”

I have known that to happen over and over again; I never saw such luck in my life. I would back Aunt Bertha against any living solitaire player for any amount of money you want, only providing that the judges leave the room during the contest.

It was no surprise to me to find that she had just the same knack with a Ouija board. She can take a Ouija board that would never show the least signs of life for any­body else and make it do practically everything but a tailspin. She can work it alone or she can make a duet of it—it makes no difference to her. She is always sure of results, either way. The spirits seem to recognize her touch on the board im­mediately. You never saw such a remark­able thing; it would convert anybody to spiritualism just to see her.

Aunt Bertha asks a question of the spirits, and the words are no more than out of her mouth when the planchette is flying about, spelling out the answer almost faster than you can read it. The service that she gets is perfectly wonderful. And, as she says herself, you can see that there is no deception about it, because she does not insist upon asking the ques­tion herself; anyone can ask whatever he can think of—there are no limits. Of course, the answers have occasionally turned out to be a trifle erratic, but then, to quote Aunt Bertha again, “what does that prove?” The spirits never claimed to be right all the time. It is only human of them to make a slip once in a while.

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

She can go deeper into the affairs of the Other Side than a mere game of questions and answers, if you want her to. Just say the word, and Aunt Bertha will get you in touch with anybody that you may name, regardless of how long ago he or she may have lived. Only the other night, for instance, someone sug­gested that Aunt Bertha summon Noah Webster’s spirit, and in scarcely less time than it takes to tell it, there he was talking to her on the Ouija board, as large as life. His spelling wasn’t all that it used to be, but otherwise he seemed to be getting along splendidly.

Again, just to show you what she can do when she sets her mind to it, she was asked to try her luck at getting connected with the spirit of Disraeli—we used up Napo­leon and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and all the other stock characters the very first week that Aunt Bertha began to work the Ouija board, and we had to go in pretty deep to think up new ones. The planchette started to move the minute that Aunt Bertha put her hands on it, if you will be­lieve me, and when she asked, “Is this Disraeli?” it immediately spelled out, “This is him.” I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes. Uncanny, it really was.

There seems to be nobody whom Aunt Bertha cannot make answer her on the Ouija board. There is even a pretty strong chance that she may be able to get Long Distance, after she has had a little more practice.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/15/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-aunt-berthas-snappy-work.html/feed0As the Spirit Moves, Part IV: Henry G. Takes to Versehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/09/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iv-henry-takes-verse.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/09/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iv-henry-takes-verse.html#respondWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31443She has been accomplishing perfect wonders on the Ouija board; she swung a wicked plan chette right from the start.

And Mrs. Curley, who is always so agreeable about doing anything like that, did some of her original child im­personations, in her favorite selections, “Don’t Tell the Daisies I Tolded You, ‘Cause I Promised Them Not to Tell”; and “Little Girls Must Always Be Dressed up Clean­, Wisht I Was a Little Boy”. As an encore she always used to give, by request, that slightly rough one about “Where Did Baby Bruvver Tum Fwom, That’s What Me Wants to Know,” in which so many people think she is at her best. Mrs. Curley never makes the slightest change in costume for her specialty–she doesn’t even remove her chain­ drive eyeglasses–yet if you closed your eyes you’d really almost think that a little child was talking. She has often been told that she should have gone on the stage. Then Mr. Bliss used to sing “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” and would gladly have done more, except that it was so hard to find songs that suited his voice.
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Those were about the only numbers that the program ever comprised. Mr. Smalley volunteered to make shadow pictures and give an imitation of a man sawing wood, including knots, but Mrs. Both somehow did not quite feel that this would have been in the spirit of the thing. So the intellectual, Sunday evenings broke up, and the local mental strain went down to normal again.

Mrs. Both is now one of the leaders in the home research movement. She has been accomplishing perfect wonders on the Ouija board; she swung a wicked plan­chette right from the start. Of course she has been pretty lucky about it. She got right in touch with one spirit, and she works entirely with him. Henry G. Thompson, his name is, and he used to live a long time ago, up round Cape Cod way, when he was undeniably a good fellow when he had it. It seems that he was interested in farming in a small way, while he was on earth, but now that he has a lot of time on his hands he has taken up poetry. Mrs. Both has a whole collection of poems that were dictated to her by this spirit. From those that I have seen I gather that they were dictated but not read.

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

But then, of course, she has not shown me all of them. Anyway, they are going to be brought out in book form in the fall, under the title “Heart Throbs From the Here­after.” The publishers are confident of a big sale, and are urging Mrs. Both to get the book out sooner, while the public is still in the right mood. But she has been having some sort of trouble with Henry, over the Ouija board. I don’t know if I have it quite straight, but it seems that Henry is behaving in a pretty unreasonable way about the percentage of royalties that he insists must go to the Thompson estate.

But aside from this little hitch–and I dare say that she and Henry will patch it up between them somehow–Mrs. Both has got a great deal out of spiritualism. She went about it in the really practical way. She did not waste her own time and the spirits’ asking the Ouija board questions about who is going to be the next President, and whether it will rain to-morrow, and what the chances are for a repeal of the Volstead Act. Instead she sat right down and got acquainted with one particular spirit, and let him do the rest. That is really the best way to go about it; get your control, and make him work your Ouija board for you, and like it. Some of our most experienced mediums agree that that is the only way to get anywhere in parlor spiritualism.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/09/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iv-henry-takes-verse.html/feed0As the Spirit Moves, Part III: When the Bridge Hounds Were Unleashedhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/02/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iii-bridge-hounds-unleashed.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/02/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iii-bridge-hounds-unleashed.html#respondWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31441The only one who really worked up any enthusiasm about it was old Mr. Emery, who as a parlor Maurice had one foot in the grave and the other on his partner's instep.

Of course, we did have our bits of the higher life once in a while in the old days. Whenever the husbands could be argued into it we used to take up the rugs and devote the evening to Terpsichore, as the boys say. But we got lit­tle or nothing out of it, considering all the effort involved. The talent for dancing among the male element of our set would, if pooled, be about equal to the histrionic ability of Mr. Jack Dempsey. The only one who really worked up any enthusiasm about it was old Mr. Emery, who as a parlor Maurice had one foot in the grave and the other on his partner’s instep. He had taken up dancing along about the time that the waltz was being condemned by press and pulpit, and his idea of a really good jazz number was “Do You See My New Shoes?”

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

The community dances never went over really big, that you could mention; by the time the second fox trot had reached the place where the record was scratched the men had all gathered in one corner and were arguing about how long you ought to let it stand before you put it in the still; and the women were settled along the other side of the room, telling each other how you could reduce without exercising or dieting. Those evenings were apt to cause hard feeling between husband and wife, and one word frequently led to another on the way home. Then there was the time that we went in rather heavily for bridge. The bridge hounds were unleashed on Tuesday evenings, and at eleven o’clock chicken salad and lettuce sandwiches would be served and the one who had the highest score could choose between a blue glass candy jar with a glass crab apple on its top, and a hive-shaped honey pot of yellow china with china bees that you’d swear were just about to sting you swarming all over it; in either case what was left went without any argument to the holder of the next highest score. On the next Tuesday the club would meet again, and play till eleven o’clock, at which time chicken salad and cream cheese and olive sandwiches would be provided, and the winner had to make up his mind between one of those handy little skating girls made of painted wood with a ball of colored twine instead of a bodice, and a limp-leather copy of Gitanjali, by Rabin­dranath Tagore, the well-known hyphenated Indian. The bridge club would doubtless have still been tearing things wide open every Tuesday, but the Ouija board came in, and the hostesses’ imagination in the selection of prizes gave out, at about the same time. Mrs. Both, who is awfully good at all that kind of thing, tried to inaugurate a series of Sunday evening intellectual festivals, but they were never what you could really call a riot. The idea was that everyone should meet at her house, and the more gifted among us should entertain and at the same time elevate the majority. But Mrs. Both could never get enough backing from the rest of the home talent. She herself read several papers that she had written on such subjects as The New Russia, and Why; and Modern Poetry-What of Its To-Morrow?

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/04/02/post-fiction/classic-fiction/spirit-moves-iii-bridge-hounds-unleashed.html/feed0As the Spirit Moves, Part II: The Age of the Ouija Boardshttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/archives/historical-retrospectives/spirit-moves-ii-age-ouija-boards.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/archives/historical-retrospectives/spirit-moves-ii-age-ouija-boards.html#commentsFri, 25 Mar 2011 20:22:59 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31439Dorothy Parker on the Ouija board, Part II.

A strong factor in the popularity of the Ouija board as a do­mestic utensil is the prevalence of Ouija­ board agencies throughout the coun­try. No shopping round is necessary; you can buy one any­where, from a notion counter to a used-car emporium. Its pur­chase used to involve much secret diplo­macy. You had to worm the manufac­turer’s address from some obscure acquaintance who was rumored to go in for all that sort of thing, and then you had to send to some vague place in the West, whence your Ouija board came to you, f. o. b., in a plain wrapper. Now there is not the slightest hitch—you can pick one up anywhere on the way home. Our own corner drug store has been celebrat­ing Ouija Week for the past month or so, and I understand that the boards are going like hot cakes—after all, you can’t better the old similes. They certainly make a taste­ful window display, combined, as they are, with garlands of rubber bath hose, with notes of color introduced by a few hot-water bags here and there. I imag­ine that the exhibit was arranged by the same person who thinks up names for the drinks served at the soda fountain.

What a simple matter this thing of com­municating with the spirits has turned out to be, since the Ouija board made its entrance into the great American family life. There is practically nothing to it-anybody can do it in the privacy of his own room. Look at the results that the members of our little circle have been getting, for instance, since we took up the Ouija board in a really thorough way. And we never had a les­son in our lives, any of us. It has been a rough season, locally, for the professional ­medium trade; I doubt, if the profession­als have even made expenses, since we learned that we could do it ourselves.

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

Home spirit communication has com­pletely revolutionized our local social life. I often wonder what we should ever do with our evenings if it weren’t for the spirits. Since they have taken to dropping in for an informal chat over the Ouija board we never lack a lively parlor game for one and all-metaphysical, yet clean.

And then just look at the money we save on amusement taxes! You know how it is yourself; the minute you leave home to make an evening of it, it runs right into expense. What with the cost of theater tickets, cabaret food and taxicab charter—good night, as the saying goes. Even such wholesome community activ­ities as inter-apart­ment poker games, wives welcome, come under the head of outgo sooner or later. Of course this is a relatively free country, and no one has a better right than you to your own opin­ion of the Ouija board as a medium of com­munication with the next world; but con­sidering it solely as a means of after-dinner entertainment you must concede that the price is right, any­way.

Where would our little circle be of an evening if the spirits had not grown so clubby? Sitting round, that’s where we would be, trying to figure out if the William Hart picture round at the Elite Motion-Picture Palace was the same one that they showed the week before over at the Bijou Temple of Film Art. Since we got our Ouija board I have so completely lost touch with the movies that Theda Bara may have got religion, for all I know about it.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/archives/historical-retrospectives/spirit-moves-ii-age-ouija-boards.html/feed1As the Spirit Moves, Part I: The New, Prohibition-Era Pastimehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/18/archives/historical-retrospectives/as-the-spirit-moves-by-dorothy-parker.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/18/archives/historical-retrospectives/as-the-spirit-moves-by-dorothy-parker.html#commentsFri, 18 Mar 2011 20:32:35 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31437Dorothy Parker writes about the age of the Ouija board.

Any day, now, I expect to read in the paper that Sir Oliver Lodge, or somebody else who keeps right in touch with all the old crowd, has received a message from the Great Beyond announcing that the spirits have walked out for a forty-four-hour week, with time and a half for overtime, and government control of Ouija boards. And it would be no more than fair, when you come right down to it; something ought to be done to remedy the present working conditions among the spirits. Since this wave of spiritualism has broken over the country it has got so that a spirit doesn’t have a minute to himself. The entire working force has to come trooping back to earth every night to put in a hard night’s labor knocking on walls, ringing bells, playing banjos, pushing planchettes round, and performing such parlor specialties. The spirits have not had a quiet evening at home for months. The Great Beyond must look as deserted as an English lecture platform.

No spirit could object to coming back now and then in the way of business, so to speak, through a professional medium. That sort of thing is more or less expected; it’s all in an eternity, as you might say. But the entrance of all these amateurs into the industry has been really too much. It is the Ouija-board trade in particular that is so trying. Now that every family has installed its own private Ouija board and expects immediate service on it at any hour of the day or night, the sting has been put into death. It’s enough to wear a poor spirit to a shadow, that’s what it is.

As the Spirit Moves
by Dorothy Parker
Originally published in the Post on May 22, 1920.

The Age of the Ouija Board

OF COURSE there may not be any particular connection, but nation-wide spiritual ism seems to have come in like a lion at just about the time that nation-wide alcoholism was going out like a lamb. The séance room has practi­cally become the poor man’s club. After all, people have to do something with their evenings; and it can always be argued on the side of the substitute pastime that it does not cut into the next morning, anyway. There was a time when Ouija board operating was looked upon only as an occupation for highly unmarried elderly ladies of pronounced religious tendencies; prohibition was regarded in much the same light, if you remember. And now the Ouija board has replaced the corkscrew as the national emblem. Times surely do change, as I overheard someone saying only yesterday.

It has certainly been a great little fiscal year for stockholders in Ouija a­board plants. A census to show the distribution of Ouija boards would prove that they average at least one to a family. There is every reason for their popularity as a family in­stitution; their initial cost can soon be scraped to­gether, their upkeep amounts to practically nothing, they take up little space, and. anybody can run them. They are the Flivvers among psychical appliances. No home can conscientiously feel that it is supplied with all mod­ern conveniences, lacking one; there is even some talk, I hear, of featuring built-in Ouija boards in the more luxurious of the proposed new apartment houses.